John Ford, the enduring director identified for such movies as Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, My Darling Clementine, The Searchers and way more, would be the topic of the subsequent version of the TCM podcast The Plot Thickens, it was introduced Wednesday.
“Decoding John Ford,” hosted by Ben Mankiewicz, premieres June 6. The fifth season of the podcast, consisting of seven episodes, will characteristic never-before-heard archival interviews with the likes of John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, Woody Strode and Ford himself.
TCM says Mankiewicz will “strip again the mythology to disclose Ford’s brilliance — alongside the usually ugly, uncomfortable truths about his life and flicks, asking whether or not we are able to ever actually separate artwork from the artist.”
“John Ford is a mercurial determine. Not surprisingly given his stature, the stereotypes about Ford are incomplete,” the host stated in an announcement. “This can be a man outlined by contradictions: he revered the army and envied those that served but bristled at authority; Ford turned referred to as one in all Hollywood’s main conservatives, but one in all his best movies is The Grapes of Wrath, one of the crucial progressive movies of traditional Hollywood; and he preached loyalty but ceaselessly berated and degraded his actors in the course of the manufacturing of his films, notably his most well-known main man, John Wayne.
“Regardless of all of that, Ford was additionally contemplative, playful and a real artist. This season of The Plot Thickens has been spent looking for out what’s true about John Ford and what isn’t. It hasn’t been straightforward attending to the underside of John Ford, however as you’ll hear, it was definitely worth the journey.”
The podcast additionally will speak about Ford being despatched by the U.S. army to Normandy Seashore in 1944 to movie D-Day and create an on-the-ground movie detailing the invasion. Does that film exist? Mankiewicz went to Europe to attempt to resolve it. (June 6, podcast premiere day, marks the eightieth anniversary of D-Day.)
To arrange “Decoding John Ford,” TCM will air 4 of the director’s movies, co-hosted by his grandson Dan Ford, on June 5. A 24-hour marathon of World Conflict II-inspired films will comply with the subsequent day.
On Sunday afternoon on the TCM Basic Movie Pageant, The Searchers (1956) will display on the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood with a 70mm world premiere restoration from Warner Bros. and The Movie Basis.
Ford, who famously wore a watch patch in his later years, acquired his file 4 directing Oscars for The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Inexperienced Was My Valley (1941) and The Quiet Man (1952) — but he by no means confirmed as much as settle for any of them.
Earlier seasons of The Plot Thickens, which premiered in 2020, centered on Peter Bogdanovich; the making of Brian De Palma’s The Bonfire of the Vanities; Lucille Ball; and Pam Grier.